A Reluctant Realist at West Point

A day after announcing that he will withdraw virtually all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016, President Obama went to West Point and tried, for the umpteenth time, to lay out an “Obama doctrine” for American foreign policy.

Arguably, this was largely unnecessary. Most Americans already know about and support Obama’s approach, which involves repudiating the Bush Administration’s military adventurism, but, nonetheless, remaining committed to prosecuting the war on terror by more covert methods; paying lip service, but not much more than that, to humanitarian interventionism; and, above all else, avoiding getting entangled in another Iraq or Afghanistan.

In a post a few weeks ago, I pointed out that Obama is a foreign-policy realist. He believes in pursuing what he sees as America’s vital interests by whatever means are necessary—diplomatic, economic, and military. In places where these vital interests aren’t at stake, such as Syria, Obama’s instinct is to stay well out of it. But he also understands that the United States benefits from a stable international system, the expansion of commerce, and a world that is open and amenable to American leadership. To that end, he rightly says, the United States needs to act as a benign hegemon rather than as an isolationist or a despot.

With Republicans in Congress and many pundits criticizing Obama for relegating foreign policy to an afterthought, and some foreign allies (read: Saudi Arabia and Israel) complaining about a lack of American leadership, the White House decided that it was time to get its message out. In days of yore, it might have been content to call in the correspondents from the Times and the Washington Post and explain some of this to them on background, knowing it would result in front-page stories laying out the President’s thinking. But these days, that isn’t how things work. Instead, we get a long and carefully orchestrated speech.

As these things go, it wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t great, either. The best came at the beginning, when Obama hailed the two and half million American military personnel who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan—can it really be that many?—saying, to the hundreds of cadets assembled before him, “You are the first class to graduate since 9/11 who may not be sent into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Noting that this was a good time to reflect on where America stands, he said:

By most measures, America has rarely been stronger relative to the rest of the world. Those who argue otherwise—who suggest that America is in decline, or has seen its global leadership slip away—are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics.

America’s military has no peer, the President went on; its economy is vibrant; its businesses are the most innovative; its “hub of alliances” is unparalleled; and when bad things happen, in places like Nigeria and Ukraine, “it is America that the world looks to for help.” The question “is not whether America will lead, but how we will lead, not just to secure our peace and prosperity, but also to extend peace and prosperity around the globe.”

At that point in the speech, however, things went a bit off. Rather than saying straight out that he is a foreign-policy realist with liberal inclinations, Obama fell back on the tired routine of dividing the world into two extremes—in this case, “interventionists from the left and right” and “self-described realists”—and claiming that he was neither, but something else. “Each side can point to history to support its claims,” he said. “But I believe neither view fully speaks to the demands of this moment.” However, when the President laid out his own “vision” of how America should act, it was about eighty per cent Brent Scowcroft/John Mearsheimer and about twenty per cent Paul Wolfowitz/Samantha Power. Here is the key passage:

I believe that a world of greater freedom and tolerance is not only a moral imperative; it also helps keep us safe. But to say that we have an interest in pursuing peace and freedom beyond our borders is not to say that every problem has a military solution. Since World War II, some of our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint but from our willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences, without building international support and legitimacy for our action, without levelling with the American people about the sacrifices required. Tough talk often draws headlines, but war rarely conforms to slogans. As General Eisenhower, someone with hard-earned knowledge on this subject, said at this ceremony in 1947, “War is mankind’s most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.”

Just in case anybody didn’t get the message, the President repeated it:

Here’s my bottom line: America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will. The military that you have joined is, and always will be, the backbone of that leadership. But U.S. military action cannot be the only—or even primary—component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

The interventionists will claim, with some justification, that Obama was setting up a straw man. Even Wolfowitz never said that “every problem has a military solution.” Liberals will protest, also with cause, that, in identifying terrorism as the “biggest direct threat to America at home and abroad,” Obama was recommitting the country to an unending and ever-expanding covert war—one in which it is tough even to define what would constitute an ultimate victory.

Obama, however, wasn’t out to placate his critics. His goal was to defend his policies, while refusing to fully acknowledge them for what they are. To this end, he cited the election in Ukraine, saying that the Western response to Russian aggression, based on multilateralism and economic sanctions, “has given a chance for the Ukrainian people to choose their future—without us firing a shot.” He pointed out that the nuclear negotiations with Iran have “a very real chance of achieving a breakthrough agreement.” And he admonished the Republicans in Congress who criticized him while undermining American leadership by taking nakedly isolationist actions, such as refusing to do anything about global warming and failing to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention.

All of these things have the merit of being true, or largely true. As I pointed out in my earlier post, Obama’s foreign-policy record isn’t as bad as the critics make out. His reluctance to send U.S. forces into action is an understandable and justifiable reaction to what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. It reflects the mood of the public and the military, and it hasn’t prevented the Administration from acting assertively when it deems action necessary in places such as Africa and East Asia, where it has significantly expanded the U.S. military presence.

I’m not entirely convinced that these enlargements of the Pentagon’s global footprint are justified, but they reflect the Administration’s assessment of where the country’s vital interests lie. Much like the decision to sustain America’s support for Egypt’s military after last year’s coup, they are another outgrowth of Obama’s realism—the label he lives by but remains reluctant to acknowledge.